Friday, February 10, 2012

Paul as the writer of the Bible

Matthew 23:13,15,23,25 "But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in...Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves... Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others...Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence."

So remember that when reading Acts 23:6 "Brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees"

Paul wrote 13 books of the New Testament: Romans, 1,2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1,2 Thessalonians, 1,2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, and if you are of the old guard, Hebrews for 14,
because it's not enough that God choose the least and lowly, He also chooses the cursed and the self righteous. It's too light a thing to bring to Himself the socially downcast, He also brings to Himself the cursed Scribe and Pharisee as well. And He uses them for great things too. If He was just the God who saves the homeless and the needy then He wouldn't be the God who saves the responsible and well off, and we could pigeonhole Him into a small area, and relegate that away. But He's not. He loves the elder brother and the younger brother, He saves the people with great mental processing power and those who have little. He's God.